Two years after Anon “Kochblock,” Wisconsin man charged with DDoS

The US government is serious about arresting Anons who attack websites.

Two years ago, a few of the minds within the hacker collective Anonymous had a bright idea—to "Kochblock" the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, who own a list of companies longer than a roll of Angel Soft toilet paper (a brand which they also own). Anonymous decided that the attack would take some of the Koch brothers' sites offline, so it asked the hivemind to flood Koch sites with traffic.

The hivemind did so—but failed to down Angel Soft. The main Koch Industries site in Wichita, Kansas did buckle, however. "Keep it up, boys and kids! LAZERS TO 146.209.131.43 kochind.com is down and sinking further! Keep it up!" read one IRC post in the #OpWisconsin channel Anons used to coordinate the attack—a channel the FBI appears to have been watching. The attacks on Koch were in large part due to the brothers' support for embattled Wisconsin governor Scott Walker at the time.

Fast forward to yesterday, when the US Attorney for Kansas, Barry Grissom, announced that his office has brought federal charges against Eric Rosol, a 37-year old Wisconsin man from the town of Black Creek. From the indictment, Rosol doesn't appear to be some kind of mastermind, but rather just a guy who allegedly decided to install and fire the "Low Orbit Ion Cannon" denial of service weapon. (Read our primer on how these attack tools work.) Says the government:

On or about February 28, 2011, Anonymous requested that persons engaged in the DDOS attack against Koch Industries redirect their efforts to “Kochind.com,” and on said date Defendant Rosol, and others, “fired” a LOIC tool at “Kochind.com.” As a result of the acts of Defendant Rosol and others, on February 28, 2011, “Kochind.com” website crashed and was unavailable for legitimate traffic.

The government wants Rosol to forfeit what is described as an "Antec CPU (Custom), no visible serial number," an apparent reference to Rosol's home-built computer. (Antec makes computer cases and power supplies.) He also faces up to 10 years in prison—five on each of the two counts—though any sentence is likely to be a small fraction of that number.

The case, which was investigated by the FBI, shows the continued government interest in even less-spectacular Anonymous activities. DDoS a website for a couple days and you might have the feds on your doorstep... even years after the attack.

81 Reader Comments

Some Koch soakers were likely involved in this. The question is who is going after them? Were the requests for web pages really about Kochs soaking the public or were they genuine inquiries for moist towellettes?

At what point does just accessing a web page owned by the refinery guys manipulating gasoline supplies to jack everyone's costs up, become genuine denial of service? When 50 million American drivers decide to keep researching the Koch brothers web pages to see if there's a clue about why gasoline prices are jacked periodically? I wonder if there's a co-relation between gas refineries Koch's own jacking prices and these so-called denial of service attacks that actually are just millions of drivers looking for answers on the Koch web sites..

Could a global rally against gas-price jacking by searching for and requesting web page updates from Koch properties just be an example of civil disobedience? Clearly, no television, radio or newspaper, blog or other investigators are getting anywhere when they try to determine what gas refiners are doing. Shuttering refineries, 'doing maintenance' - pretty much whatever they like, with no oversight or transparency, apparently causing 'shortages' of gasoline. So I wonder, when will a 100 million Americans paying billions of dollars every year in gasoline price hikes decide to go research Koch refineries, and their list of 'holdings'.

Is that denial of service? Or just 100 million people deciding to express their freedom of speech?